Monolith Cocktail Blog

ALBUM REVIEW/ANDREW C. KIDD

Exit Rituals ‘Blinding Void’
(Just Isn’t Music)

Blinding Void (Just Isn’t Music, August 2023) is the collaborative effort of husband and wife, Alan Myson (Ital Tek) and Anneka Warburton. I have previously written about Itak Tek on the Monolith Cocktail, which included a brief overview of his back catalogue: Our Daily Bread 579: Ital Tek ‘Timeproof’ June 22, 2023.

Anneka Warburton has an extensive musical curriculum vitae. She has collaborated with various artists on Mike Paradinas’s Planet Mu label; examples include the track Heart Space on the Vex’d album Cloud Seed (March 2010), the single of Starkey’s Ear Drums and Black Holes LP (April 2010), and my favourite FaltyDL vocal track, the rhythmical Gospel Of Opal on his You Stand Uncertain LP (March 2011). She collaborated with Forest Swords on the tribal track Anneka’s Battle from his lauded Engravings LP (Tri Angle, August 2013). Warburton also collaborated with Myson, featuring on Restless Tundra, the concluding track to Ital Tek’s Midnight Colour LP (Planet Mu, June 2010) – a time when footwork was regal, when bells and hit-hat hits and four-four beats tripped to skip into their next bar. Anneka has an EP to her name: the soulful Life Force (Anti Ghost Moon Ray, April 2017), the fourth track of which was showcased by Mary Anne Hobbs on BBC 6Music in January 2015. Her quasi-baroque experimentations using a Korg Minilogue on the track Burst (self-released, February 2018) confirmed her compositional skill.

We return to August 2023. Alan Myson and Anneka Warburton have collaborated again, this time as Exit Rituals, a group in its own right. Blinding Void opens with Soon Bloom. Sustained glass-shattering synths pierce the headphones; beneath this, the deep sounds of a cello bowing. A three-note pad eventually filters through, its minor melody proliferates, ascending to fuse in unison. Everything eventually exits. Warburton’s vocals are expanded further on A Fluid Portrait. She sings atop a sonic soup which stirs circumspectly. The vocoded vocals double up over an alarm-like synth that keys indistinctly.

A thudding heartbeat rumbles on Dream Canyon. This is not the lub-dub of a mammalian heart. Perhaps the life sounds of an object in the cosmos, or even light? Its reverberated third beat thrums. On the subject of light, this appears in many forms on this track, and the EP more generally: vocals, pushed away into the peripheries, aerate; an occasional electronic flourish tremolos into the distance. As the denouement of Dream Canyon is reached, the heartbeat becomes clearer, less muddy, until suddenly – it cuts out. Treble reigns supreme at this juncture. I am reminded of Björk circa Vulcincura (One Little Independent Records, January 2015).

The double-unison vocals of The Knife play out on The Light. The deep cello sound makes a further appearance. Staccato-synths provide momentary reference. There is no exposition on this track, no coda; rather, it moves seamlessly onto the title track which showcases the vocal talents of Warburton. She sings hazily, wavering even. I imagine her sung voice corresponding to the visible wavelengths of light; drawn out across their electromagnetic spectrum, the sharper frequencies are red, and the quieter violet stretch until they become ultraviolet, and onwards to X-rays. The synths are stripped-back and the bass bright. Everything coalesces.

Warburton’s vocals chop and stutter on Lacerate, helicoptering around to achieve impossible frequencies. In time they descend to merge with the bass-heavy undertones that have rumbled throughout this EP. The concrete synths of Myson begin to pummel the aural cavities of the listener. We are offered only perfunctory light on this track: the slightest of key changes in its very last moments.

Does Blinding Void have a narrative? It has yet to become clear. The highlight? The electro-classical Soon Bloom which mirrors the life-cycle of a flower. And where does this EP stand in the respective output of the couple? The earliest collaboration between Myson and Warburton was on Ital Tek’s 808-driven, sitar-infused dubstep EP, Deep Pools (Square Records, December 2007). The intensity of Weave on that release echoed the likes of Benga and Skream and Shackleton. Their collaboration then was a modern Lamb, of sorts. The respective sounds of Myson and Warburton have travelled a long way since then. With Exit Rituals, they achieve balance. Warburton brings warmth and light and organicity that offsets the machinations of the drum machines and caliginous synthwork of Myson. With Exit Rituals, there is a suggestion of gravity in the deep vacuum of electronica.